Hot Presses

It is a strangely divided page that houses the reviews for Lawrence andGibson's releases of Privatising Parts and Getting Under Sailin the present week's New Zealand Listener (unshrouded from paywall on August 15). The two page spread is split in four. Compare that technique to that of the Dominion Post... please!

An adverto-competition for a book about wine takes up half of the left page (p.38), while an advertisement for the New Zealand International Film Festival takes up half of the right (p.39). Our review, along with a review of a Philip Henser novel is protected from the magazine's outer margins by advertising. There is no chance that our reviews will fall off the page, buffered as they are by revenue generating content, or content generating revenue (as the case is with the 100 Must Try Wines competition - perhaps I will enter, perhaps I will WIN!).

The review for the two L and G books makes up two-fifths of the page and is backed in tasteful soft lime, much like the walls of our offices for those of you in the ken. The review is by a gentleman named Sam Finnemore who I have just google stalked (as I do with any reviewer under the rationale of "who will critique the critiquers?"). I am pretty sure Sam is a man.

When requests were made for book cover images to one of our PR merchants, Mssr Stephens, it was assumed a small review was to be filed. A larger review would have required a photo of the author. But as a small publisher we are happy with inclusion on any level bar a subpar review. To have the torso of Meros printed on page appeases some sort of Mad-God-Ego.

The title of the review references the title of the Meros book. It is 'Privatisation on parade'. Five of seven present collective members think it sparks a jolly ring. One thinks that promenading, as suggested by the term 'parade' is disastrously sentimental. The other is Skyping in the other room and can't be interrupted.

Links and analysis of the review will come later, once the paywall has been lowered and once I look up the word 'swingeing' in my Mum's big Oxford dictionary that she keeps in the lounge of her granny flat in Naenae.